Amelia Earhart
Real Name: Amelia Earhart Case: Disappearance Date: July 2, 1937 Location: Howland Island Case Amelia Earhart was a female aviation celebrity in the 1930s. She was the first pliot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross for this record. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of an organization for female pilots.Earhart joined the faculty of an aviation department in 1935 as a visiting faculty member to counsel women on careers and help inspire others with her love for aviation. In 1937, accompanied by flight navigator Fred Noonan, she was attempting an around-the-world flight. On the 2nd July, Earhart and Noonan departed from Lae for Howland Island which was 4,113km away. It was the last time that they would be seen alive. The last known position of their plane was near Nukumanu Islands 1,300km into the flight. The United States Coast Guard were set up to communicate via radio but this was not successful with problems believed to have been caused by lack of knowledge of this new technology and not putting into consideration the half hour time difference when scheduling. During the approach to Howland Islands Earharts transmissions could be heard, but it appeared that messages sent to their aircraft were not being received. As time went on transmissions from Earhart became more and more garbled and soon became hard to decipher. The transmissions received indicated that Earhart and Noonan were in the vicinity of Howland island, but could not see it and after numerous more attempts it appeared that the connection had dropped. The last transmission received from Earhart indicated she and Noonan were flying along a line of position (taken from a "sun line" running on 157–337 degrees) which Noonan would have calculated and drawn on a chart as passing through Howland. Only one hour after the last transmission was received had the search for them begun with the United States Coast Guard and Navy both searching the surrounding waters of Howland Island and the neighbouring Gardner Island. The official search ended 17 days later after $4 million had been spent on search resources. At this point in time it was the largest, most expensive and most publicized search to date. Even though the official search had recovered no physical evidence to suggest where they had landed, Amelia's husband George Putnam financed another search for many weeks after but no trace of Amelia or Fred was ever found. Theories on disappearance Many researchers who have examined her disappearance believe that somewhere near Howland island, she ran out of fuel and ditched the plane in the ocean where she and Fred were incapacitated by the impact, and drowned when the plane sank beneath the waves. The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world, with many hundreds and thousands of miles separating tiny dots of dry land. However, it is also believed her aircraft should have been able to float until discovered and numerous searches of the ocean floor failed to find the aircraft. Some researchers are convinced by unsubstantiated accounts that Amelia and Fred veered off course by 2,000 miles and landed on Saipan which was controlled by the Japanese who than captured and executed the two flyers. Witnesses place Amelia's plane in the custody of military officials in the area and the execution of a red-haired American woman by the Japanese. One US Army soldier claims to have seen Amelia's plane on Saipan during World War II, just seven years after she had disappeared. He claims the Army destroyed her plane later that night. On the same island, another soldier claims he found a bag filled with documents that were owned by Amelia, like her passport. He turned the documents over to his commanding officer, and the documents, like Amelia, were never seen again. One Saipan native who was still living in the 1990’s said she watched Amelia get executed. The real truth of these events has yet to be revealed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AE-Fred.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AE-Fred.jpgAmelia Earhart and Fred Noonan, Los Angeles, May 1937. However, based on the lack of concrete evidence to support these theories, the most likely outcome is that Amelia and Noonan might have found Gardner Island, landed the plane on the Island and died while waiting to be rescued. In 1940, a British colonial officer and a licensed pilot, radioed his superiors to tell them that he believed he had found a female skeleton, along with a sextant box, under a tree on the island's southeast corner. The skeleton had roughly the same proportions as Amelia Earhart but were discovered missing when modern scientists tried to test them to determine conclusively. In a 1998 report to the American Anthroplogical Association, researchers concluded, that they "can be certain of is that bones were found on the island in 1939–40, associated with what were observed to be women’s shoes and a navigator’s sextant box, and that the morphology of the recovered bones, insofar as we can tell by applying contemporary forensic methods to measurements taken at the time, appears consistent with a female of Earhart’s height and ethnic origin." Further searching of the island led to the discovery of an aluminium panel possibly from the plane, a piece of Plexiglas identical down to the exact thickness and curvature of the window on the plane and a size 9 shoe heel resembling the footwear Earhart is shown to be wearing in promotional photos for the flight. Even though the crash and sink theory is more commonly believed, the surviving Earhart and Putnam family all have said to believe in this theory here. Extra Notes: This segment first ran on Unsolved Mysteries in the November 7, 1990 episode. Results: Unsolved: The crash and sink theory seems to be more widely believed by people, but the Gardner Island theory has a much more confirmed explanation. Links: Amelia Earhart Official Web site http://tighar.org/ ---- Category: Pacific Ocean Category: 1938 Category: Disappearances Category: Air-Related Cases Category: Unsolved